Creating dynamic always-on wearable apps

An always-on app provides the user with the ability to view information at any time, without having to wake the device; however, the visible information may become stale if the actual information changes more frequently than once in a minute.

How to do it...

We may need to update the content on the wearable more frequently than once in a minute; thus, we can schedule an alarm to trigger an update outside the one-minute interval:

1. We will need the wake lock permission on both, the handheld and wearable:

   [assembly: UsesPermission(Manifest.Permission.WakeLock)]

2. If we want to support older wearables, we will need to set the wearable library as optional:

   [assembly: UsesLibrary(
     "com.google.android.wearable", false)]

3. Next, we need to inherit it from WearableActivity:

   public class MainActivity : WearableActivity

4. We are going to use the alarm manager to send us an Intent instance, which we will respond to by updating the UI. As the intent will try to launch...